“Dis—turbed!” exclaimed Nell, faintly.
And then she looked up quickly in his face with a glance so full of inquiry, of fear, that, against his wish and his will, Clifford’s own eyes met hers with a suspicious frown.
“What was it that disturbed you?” asked the girl.
He hesitated. Surely this candid anxiety was a proof of innocence, not guilt! Surely a thief would have been ready with a glib speech, with a look of overdone surprise. He looked away again, absolutely unable to frame, to her, the story of his adventure.
“Oh, I don’t know. It was nothing, I suppose,” he answered, confusedly.
He felt that the girl’s eyes were upon him, but he would not meet them. He must speak about his loss, of course, but it should be to her uncle, not to her.
“What are you going to do with yourself till breakfast-time?” she asked, pleasantly. “We have no nice garden where you could walk about on a pleasant lawn and pick roses. Will you go out over the marsh and bathe in the sea? I could show you the way to the ferry. Or would it be too slow for you to watch us turn the cows out?”
Innocence! Surely this was innocence. Clifford only hesitated for a moment. During that moment he told himself that he would conquer his feeling for the girl, that he would not run the risk of becoming more infatuated than he was. But the next moment the girl conquered, and looking down into the fair, sweet face, he was ready to think that his own senses had lied to him, that the hand which had robbed him could not be Nell’s.
So he followed her out into the fresh morning air, helped her to turn the bolts and draw the bars to let out the cows for their day’s wanderings over the marsh, and to look for the eggs which lay warm in the nests of the fowl-house.
Long before breakfast-time the occurrence of the night had become a half-forgotten nightmare, and Clifford was enjoying Nell’s unaffected, lively chatter as much as on the previous day. Only when his hand touched hers, as she took the basket of eggs from him, did Clifford remember, with a shudder, that it was the same touch which he had felt in the night, the same smooth, soft skin, the same slender little fingers; so that he was bound, before he met the landlord, to come back to his old theory that Nell was a somnambulist.